Could you give us the general overview of this programme which earned Nasarawa the best performing state in the entire country?
In Nasarawa State the programme is called N-CARES but at the federal level it is referred as NG-CARES which stands for Nigeria COVID-19 Action, Recovery and Economic Stimulus. It is a programme designed when the COVID-19 pandemic wave was ebbing to mitigate the economic losses suffered by the outbreak. The programme stands on three pillars; the pillars include agriculture, livelihood support and SME. This programme has a total of eleven interventions areas being implemented in all states. Nasarawa State is implementing seven of the pillars and its funded by the World Bank in collaboration with the federal government.
In Nasarawa like other states we use the P for R which means Programme for Result. What this entails is that the support the state will get from the funding partner is dependent on the level of its implementation. And that is why Nasarawa State came first because our achievements were the best in the country by the second round of the assessment. There is assessment that takes place every six months commissioned by the World Bank and a verificator which verifies all the results. In the first assessment Nasarawa State was the 27th in the country but in the second one we turned out to be the best.
You are intervening in seven areas; what these projects you are working on?
The seven areas we are intervening in are across two pillars-agricultural and livelihood support. For the livelihood support pillar, we have three intervention areas. The first is social transfer which are stipends given to indigent persons such as people living with disability, the critically ill and urban poor. So far, we have supported more than 7, 500 people in this regard and we have so many success stories. We have so many people who have recovered from chronic diseases as a result of the intervention. We have those who have regained their sights through surgeries and those who could not send their wards to school doing so. The focus of the intervention is to ensure that the people recover, pay their medical bills and pay for school fees of the children.
The second intervention under the livelihood is public works. What we do in this regard is to engage young men and women under the ages of 18 to 45 and even 50 in public works in schools, hospitals, Churches and Mosques to keep those places tidy and get paid stipends that will keep them going. We have had more than 7, 000 in the intervention who have been able to establish small businesses from the proceeds. As they are working, we provide them with skills in trade of their choice so that if they can be on their own after the completion of their vocations. That will happen within a year after which we exit them.
The third one is the basic infrastructure at the communities. These infrastructures include intervening in education, health, nutrition, water and sanitation. In this regards we have given support to over 100 communities in terms of education, 160 in the area of water and sanitation which is essentially through the provision of solar-powered boreholes so that people can have access to clean water. We also have more than 50 communities that have benefited from health infrastructures. In education we have seen high enrolment in many of the schools we carried out renovations. We also provide furniture in schools we are intervening in. In health we provided basically hospital equipment, build new wards in primary health care centres. And of course, in water if you have been following the survey in Nasarawa State you will know that we are in dire need of water in the state and it is one our key areas. We have provided water to many communities. I was in a community called Amiri in Keana local government area of the state where we provided water to Fulani and Tiv community.
It is a community that has both the farmers which are the Tiv and herders, the Fulani people cohabiting together. The interesting thing is that most of the community members who are herders are leaving the nomadic life and settled there. They told us they normally travel long distance to access water. They will leave their houses 6:am in search of water and will not return until 4: pm. So, you see that the whole day is spent trying to get water for domestic use. Even the water that they get is not a clean one. They told us that after we provided them with the borehole, they didn’t use the water until they fasted for a whole day. We went to observe the impact of the project and we were regale with these interesting stories. We heard these kinds of stories from communities we provided health care support, education and water among others all the time.
The second pillar is agriculture where we have been providing inputs and services. When I said inputs and services I mean seedlings, herbicides, fertilisers as package to farmers. We are also providing services to the herders which include the feeds, de-wormers and other essentials as package to assist them. In agriculture, 21,000 farmers have benefited and the intervention is still ongoing. We also have our most achieve intervention which is the rural road which entails providing access from the farms to the markets across the state. So, we have done 450 kilometers of roads across the state. We have done more than 50 of the road networks across the state with a record of 170,000 beneficiaries in this intervention alone. And it is a very impactful intervention. We have been invited by many communities to come and celebrate what the state government has done for them.
We also have th assets for farmers which are provided to mitigate food loss and also improve the value of produce that farmers get from their farms. In that regards we have done over 13,000 in this intervention, and it is really an impactful intervention like I earlier mentioned and it brings the communities together because we provided them with shared facilities. We provide them with mobile trenchers for maize, cassava, sprayers, storage facilities where the communities can come together to make use of them. So, it is an important intervention for us.
And there is also an intervention which we called a wet market infrastructure. A wet market infrastructure is just basically providing water and sanitation at rural and perishable markets. That is markets where perishable items are being sold. In that regards we have done over 110 wet markets across the state. I will give you and instance, there is a wet market called Kasuwan tomatoes (Tomatoes market) in Lafia. Before our intervention, they have no source of water. With the facility they can wash their products before displaying them for sale. This improves even the nutritional value of the products.
From all indication you have done a lot to improve the standard of living especially of the rural communities; are all these many projects you listed tied to the initial N13 billion released to the state by the World Bank?
I think the N13 billion was pronounced because that was what put us in the number one spot. I will give you the history. When the programme started, we got what we called an advance because if you are starting a programme and you don’t have result you need to be given an advance just to commence the work. So, we were given an advance of N900 million, and from that advance we were able to do some work. After the first verification, we were placed 27 on list of performing states. That earned N1.5 billion for the state, and it is from the amount and investment of the state government (because the state government also put money in the programme) that we were able to produced the result that earned us the N13 billion which also earned us the number one spot in the entire country. The amount is also 10 percent of the entire disbursement, so while the entire states in the country shared N130 billion, we got N13 billion. It was really an impactful result that we got and we used the money to judiciously which now earned us number two spot in the country. Even though other states are coming up by drawing from our experiences, we are still up there.
This state government contribution that you mentioned is it inform counterpart? What do you call that?
It is not informed of counterpart. This programme for result instrument used is the state structure, so every delivery platform or every office that is delivering the work in the N-CARES is in the state budget and can be funded from the state budget. So, what the bank just does is to support what the state is funding, to add to it, and to also say that when we add to it and you achieved more results, we will pay you for the results so achieved. The state government can approve and disburse money for the state to do more in N-CARES and then we get money from the World Bank. So, it is not really a counterpart. There are two type of financing instruments. There is what we called the IPF-Investment Financing which comes with the counterpart. There is also the P for R instrument which only pay for results achieved. What that means is that you carryout the activities and achieve the desired results before you are paid.
In terms of providing infrastructure how do you select communities you intervene in?
In the programme there is what we called the CDD approach. Community-driven development (CDD) is a modality of project design and delivery which transfers decision-making power and, often financial and technical resources, directly to communities or groups of end-users. What this means is that the community takes charge of the projects from start to the end. It is in two forms. There is the approach that goes to the community and society on one hand, and the approach that goes to individuals. The approach that goes to the community has to start from the expression of interest. That means that every community needing water, education, agriculture and health interventions has to write. Once they write, our officers will go there and evaluate and facilitate a need assessment so that we can understand what they want. When the needs are more than one, we guide them to priorities based on the available purse. For every community there is an available purse for it to expend, and it is based on the purse that we will priorities what it wants to do. We then fund the community. They will select the committee that will undertake the work, those that will do the procurement, and those that will do the M and E. So, the community owns the project from the start to finish, all we do is to monitor and ensure that the right thing is done.